T-Tail-Tall-Tail:
Dinner's Ready
Hal Maynard
Wee were flying from Elmendorf AFB to Travis AFB at 41,000 feet, smooth as glass, and trying to stay awake. Both pilots were in their seats, and I was working on the per diem forms.
Suddenly, there was a loud explosion in the cargo compartment and a white fog formed in front of the flight deck entrance door. I called "Decompression!" over the intercom, and we started an emergency descent. With oxygen mask on and throttles to idle, down we went ... but only for a few seconds.
The loadmaster came running to the flight deck door
shouting and waving his
arms to stop the descent. We leveled off at about
39,000 and the load said we
had no decompression. It was something worse ... and
it was caused by the
co-pilot.
Too bad this was the last leg of the mission because
the CP would have been
buying drinks the rest of the trip.....
A few minutes before, the co-pilot had placed a can
of beef stew in the oven at
450 degrees, set the timer for 30 minutes and did
not punch hole in the can. In
short order the can exploded and blew open the
latched oven door. The sides of
the oven were bulging out and beef stew was all over
the front end of the cargo
compartment, including the sleeping auxiliary crew
members.
Hal Maynard
C-141 Navigator
What the oven looked like, (pre-stew)